Part 1: Growing income-wealth inequality and conventional solutions

SINGAPORE (Aug  20): I wrote about the growing empirical evidence of declining income mobility some weeks back. Few would dispute that this is happening, in both the developed and developing worlds. There may be more debate over the reasons behind this phenomenon but the un­equal distribution of income growth and wealth inequality are, without doubt, the key factors.

Economic inequality has risen rapidly, especially in the past decade, perpetuated by digitalisation of economies and, perhaps unwittingly, by central bank policies in the aftermath of the global financial crisis.